


A Family

by Reinette_de_la_Saintonge



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Caring, F/M, Family, Feelings, Sad, Sudden Realisations, Suppressed Feelings, What Ifs, light Sick-Coe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 02:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12925068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reinette_de_la_Saintonge/pseuds/Reinette_de_la_Saintonge
Summary: In the aftermath of Mary's assassination attempt on Simcoe, the two unexpectedly get to talk to each other.





	A Family

**Author's Note:**

> My attempt, which is nowhere nearly as awesome as the contributions I have been allowed to read, to jump onto the Simcoe/Mary bandwagon. 
> 
> Both deserved so much better than the show gave them, especially Mary.

 

Night had fallen and Whitehall finally lay peaceful. Not exactly asleep, she had woken from a terrible dream.

Other than the long-faded footsteps of Aberdeen, who had some two hours ago checked on Thomas, she could not hear a thing. What a strange contrast to the commotion of the evening, Mary thought. The Rangers shouting to each other, the shot in the woods and of course, the Captain’s blood-curdling cries, his hand pressed firmly to the left side of his head where a bullet had struck his ear off.

 _Her_ bullet. She had fired the ball with the intention to kill him, end his existence in order to preserve Abraham. She had stabbed another of Simcoe’s men in cold blood. Not that she had much sympathy for any of them individually, but he could still be alive, had he not been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had she not grabbed his bayonet from his belt and frantically thrusted it into his chest.

Nausea rose in her at the thought of the dying man, his eyes, wide with shock and pleading for her to stop while she had raged on, his blood staining her dress, hands and face.

The room around her began to spin as if she had imbibed on copious amounts of alcohol and made her feel even sicker.

She rose, her bare feet touching the cool floorboards, hoping that walking around her room would soothe her raging stomach somewhat. It was of no use, of course, for the reasons for her feeling sick were not of the physical kind; it was a feeling she had never encountered before. It was not like having eaten spoilt food or even morning-sickness at all- the nausea seemed to be a growth, a horrible sapling of sorts, that steadily grew upwards, through her throat, where it started to choke her, slowly and deliberately with its strong branches.

Walking didn’t help much. When she thought of the blood once more, the bloody handprint on the wall a terrible reminder of her ungodly misdeed for all times,  seemed to taunt her.

-And of what use had it all been? Another man was dead, but Simcoe was still alive. Wounded and angry, but alive.

All she had wanted to do was to protect her husband.

No, not her husband, she came to realise quickly, her _family_. Of which, unfortunately, Abraham Woodhull was an integral part of, being the father of her son. It had, strictly speaking, not even been her decision to marry him, an agreement had been struck between her father and Richard Woodhull for Mary Smith to marry the late Captain Thomas Woodhull, Abraham’s older brother. And when he had died, Richard had pushed Abraham to the altar in his brother’s stead and she had falsely been reassured by her father that the younger Woodhull was just as good as his brother. Nobody had told her she would be the wife of a traitorous cabbage farmer. As a girl, she had dreamed of a loving young man with blue eyes and a warm smile, a fabrication of her dreams, a hoard of well-behaved children with whom she could play all day, a pet pug and pretty dresses.  She had never thought she would be a lazy, unsuccessful farmer’s helpmeet who spent most of his time being a dilettante intelligence agent or sleeping with another woman. Which of the two was worse she could not tell.

So much for dreams.

Often, she wondered what could have been had Thomas lived and the fact that, strictly speaking, she spent the rare nights Abe chose to visit her since their marriage with her brother-in-law felt sickening.

He never loved her, she never loved him. This was the cold, hard truth.

But as long as Abe lived, she was his espoused and he the father of her son. _Her_ son.  

Abe didn’t care much about the boy, but she wanted Thomas to grow up having a father, at least as a constant physical presence that might one day due to a divine miracle take an interest in the little boy; it would certainly be much preferable to having to explain to him that his papa was hanged for treason, which would also taint his reputation for life. Besides, between the almost as enthusiastic grandfather (she recognised a pattern in the Woodhull men there), which left her and Aberdeen, who had to balance on a tightrope between her doubled workload as housemaid and nurse,  Thomas doubtlessly lacked a father figure in his life.

Perhaps this was the reason he appeared to be so taken with the Captain.

It was almost comic to think she had tried to shoot the man who took an interest in her son even though he was not his father to save the self-centred ignoramus she was wedded to and who only cared to see his own son infrequently.

A few days ago, she had, purely by chance, walked into the study investigating sounds she had not been able to place only to find Simcoe playing with Thomas, both seated on the floor with some of Thomas’ wooden toys. For a moment, she had stood and watched, as the tall, imposing figure who could have snapped her son’s neck with one well-executed twist of his large, strong hands, gently picked him up and whirled him across the room, which had her usually rather quiet son laugh with delight. He had stopped, mid-spinning, still holding Thomas up when his eyes had found her at the door. After exchanging a glance with her, he had set Thomas down on the floor and looked down on her with his usual cool hauteur.

“Your son was playing unattended outside. I considered it prudent not to leave him there alone. After all, Rogers is still at large.”

The only way Mary could explain what must have happened was that Aberdeen had not paid attention for a moment while hanging the washing out and Thomas had wandered off and ultimately crossed paths with the Captain.

Even while remembering this moment, she could feel the ice-cold stare of his eyes pierce her body. This was his usual facial expression, a hint of perpetual anger and disdain twisting the corners of his mouth into an everlasting frown that was completed by the expressionlessness of his eyes. Perhaps it was their colour, perhaps it was the stare that unnerved her so much, but when he had played with Thomas, the pale blue depths had ignited with a fire she had never seen before and he had smiled, laughed even- it was then she had first realised he was a man, not an inanimate obstacle.

It had not made doing what she had to do any easier, but it had to be done.

She felt remorseful; after all, Simcoe had never threatened her or her son. Granted, when first she had seen him with Thomas on his arm one night, she had not believed her eyes and wanted him to leave her son alone, the past incidents and many smaller ones similar to it however had assured her Thomas was under no threat.

Beneath the remorse, there was also fear: she remembered the moment just before she had shot. The world around her had slowed, her mind emptied itself of all content and she had aimed, with calm exhilaration and pulled the trigger.

-Did _he_ know this feeling, too? For a moment, a part of her had enjoyed it, the thrill, the chase, the hunt until she had come to realise that her actions decided upon matters of life and death and she had been set on becoming Death’s diligent handmaiden.

Stabbing the solitary Ranger had been an altogether different matter, she had not for once felt any strange anticipating calmness as she did that. As far as her fresh experience in the matter went, it was too close, too personal a death to administer to another person to feel anything but dread and horror.

She was a killer. She had attempted to kill one man and killed another and thus committed a mortal sin- but it had been to save her family. There had to be an element of redemption in that, right?

Worst of all was that she had not intended to inflict pain. From all she had heard, it was a painless death, to be surprised by a ball to the head, almost instant, too.

It had never been her intention to rip off a man’s ear and make him yowl with pain and rage and she had never wanted to viciously stab someone to death.

And yet, she had done all those things without flinching or hesitation. She would never have thought she could do such a thing.

Was she any better than Simcoe?

Or was he any worse than her?

The bloodied clothing under her bed seemed to haunt the room like a ghost.

Without thinking, her feet carried her to the door. She tied her dressing gown tighter around her shoulders and shivered as she opened the door and her still damp hair met the distinctively colder air of the corridor.

Where should she go? Perhaps she could fetch a book or pour herself a glass of wine or spirits to calm her nerves-

What was that?

A soft, low sound was audible. It didn’t come from Richard’s room, which was further down the corridor, nor did the voice belong to Thomas and had it been her son, her motherly instincts would have warned her by now.

Aberdeen slept in a small room in the garret which left only one person to be the source of the noises: Simcoe.

She proceeded to his room and listened. He was talking softly, interspersed with stifled occasional expressions of pain.

Slowly, she opened the door to Simcoe’s room.

A taper was lit and Simcoe sat up in bed, visibly weakened and his head supported by the headboard. He was, as far as she could tell, still mostly dressed, save for his cravat, boots, coat and sash, for the latter items lay untidily strewn across the room where Simcoe had rid himself of them, which was most uncharacteristic for usually, he was tidy to the extreme and very particular about his attire as she knew from the washerwomen whom he sometimes burdened with the exact specifications of how to treat his shirts, coat or whatever other item he had found fault with.

Beneath the bloodied bandage, traces of blood had continued to stain his face. He looked weary, beaten –afraid, vulnerable.

This man was not the roaring beast that had yelled at the Rangers or stormed into her room to ascertain himself of her wellbeing, he looked lost, fragile.

-And in his arms she could spy a shock of golden curls reflecting the light of the taper on the nightstand.

This discovery prompted her to make herself known to him.

“Captain?” she asked softly, scared to scare him, which might spiral him back into rage.

Slowly, he turned his head.

His eyes looked strangely watery and angry at the same time.

 “He wandered in a mere half-hour ago”, Simcoe said defensively. “He was afraid and had a nightmare.”

“Tonight’s events have left us all shaken”, she commented, remembering him standing in the door as she had quickly scrambled the linen to cover herself in the bathtub.

The corners of his mouth twitched, visibly uncertain what to do or say.

She stepped closer to the bed and choked back a tear.

It was such a silly, little thing, really- the way he held Thomas in his arms, sheltered him, and had drawn a blanket over his tiny body- it was inexplicable.

Somehow, the man she had tried to extinguish to save her family was now acting like family. No worse, not just like any family member, like Thomas’ father should act, if he were here and that automatically made him-

“Are you very hurt, Captain?” she asked, if only to distract herself from her thoughts.

“My hearing seems to be returning, to a certain point, I assume. Given the ball could have proven fatal had it lodged a mere inch further to the right, I consider myself lucky to have survived.”

He tried to act as if everything was as usual, but Mary could see it was not. The bloodied cloth and basin on the nightstand spoke a different language and where once his ear had been, a red stain sharply contrasted the white bandage.

She had done that.

At this point, Mary could no longer hold back. She cried; she had never been one of these women like Anna Strong who could cry tears of molten glass with the gracefully tormented facial expression of a painting or statue, her face grew blotchy and frankly unappealing.

“Don’t.” It was no command, it was an expression of utter helplessness.

“If I never had- if you hadn’t- if- if Abe-“

Half-sentences of a confession escaped her. No. She must never tell him, or else- yes, what would he do, have to do?

“Hush, Mrs Woodhull. You’re waking the boy.”

The shakiness of his voice revealed he too, overpowered by the emotions of having only by chance eluded death and the utter novelty of the present situation, was on the verge of emotions he had never shown to anybody at Whitehall before.

Observing how she steadied her trembling body by gripping a bedpost, he offered her to sit down.

“I do not mean to sound indecent, you merely look distressed. Besides, your son needs you.” Carefully, she lowered herself onto the bed, sitting awkwardly next to Setauket’s fiercest wild beast who made enough room for her to sit down without touching him, but still sitting close enough to enable Thomas being passed to her with minimal movement that could potentially wake the boy.

As the Captain put Thomas into her arms, they inevitably touched; hands slid across one another for less than a second, a short, accidental touch.

His hand was warm, alive.

Silently, they sat there, staring into the fireplace where the flames burnt lowly, lost in their own thoughts.

Fire, blood, war. It all became the same for Mary and she looked away.

“I know there is something you won’t tell me, Mrs Woodhull.”

She looked at him, the supposed monster visibly stricken by great pain, and only answered “yes.” He nodded slightly and returned his gaze to the flames, thinking.

“You realise, I never wished you or your son to be hurt or otherwise affected by my personal quarrel with your husband”, he said slowly as if he suspected something.

“I know.” Their eyes met and neither of them dared to be the first to break away, for breaking away equalled admitting terrible things that had gone unsaid so far. Secrets, remorse, fear.

 _We are both warriors_ , Mary thought in an almost overwhelming moment of epiphany, staring into the blue depths of his eyes that revealed an underwater landscape of drowned villages and ship-wrecked vessels underneath a seemingly calm surface, their experiences could not be likened to anything Abe or the others at Whitehall could understand.

Simcoe fought for his king and county, for what he believed in. She fought for her son, her family, for this was what she believed in.

Abe fought because his friends had talked him into a foolish, reckless game.

The war had come to Whitehall and she was sad they had to stand on different sides.

What could be if- what could have been could she turn back time, or turn time forth, she would never find out. But what she could do was stand strong, for her son, for the modest hopes and dreams she still had.

-No, _such_ thoughts were unbeseeming of a respectable woman like her.

She wiped the unwelcome images that had tried to conquer her imagination away, some of her and the Captain walking on either side of Thomas, holding his hands, some of the Captain in his natural state, or rather what she imagined he looked like, a strong presence with a furred chest (as the base of his neck suggested now that she had seen him without his cravat for the first time) his hands deliciously tight around her hips.

“Some things are not meant to be.” As if he had read her thoughts, he sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“You fancy having a family, a happy one. I think of the same.”

It was a great thing for him to admit this. His voice trembled a little, but he caught himself quickly to elaborate:

“You know, I am prepared to die on the field. A soldier must be. Yet I never thought I would be shot at Whitehall and that my life would end prematurely. Whitehall always seemed safe. Despite my dislike for your kin, I cannot say I otherwise find anything else to my displeasure.”

Simcoe smiled faintly, genuinely, at her.

She knew what he meant, for she had felt the same only moments before.

There was nothing left to say between them.

 

Mary awoke in the early hours of the morning. The sun began to rise on the horizon, red as blood. It took her a moment to realise where she was before she remembered and her senses revived from their initial morning drowsiness: She must have fallen asleep with Thomas still lying across her in Simcoe’s room.

To her own surprise, she found she had unwittingly ventured closer to him during the night: so much so she could almost feel his hair brush her cheek and smell the oddly enticing mixture of blood and male perspiration that still clung on to him. The man in question was still asleep, still half-sitting up and she realised she had rested all night against his shoulder.

One of his arms had wrapped around her in her sleep as if he had reached out for her to cling on to her while awash in the terrible images the last night had provided him with.

It was indecent, but she didn’t care. As long as Richard and Aberdeen would not find her in Simcoe’s room, nobody would ever know.

For a moment, she dared to close her eyes again in a game of pretend. If a complete stranger had entered the room at this moment, he would have found a perfect little family, father, mother and child.

This world, however, was not a careless dreamland. Another thing she noticed was how the blanket that had originally covered Thomas was now sheltering her as well. Softly, she laid the little boy down on the bed without waking him and rose, adjusting her dressing-gown around her and moved to Simcoe’s side of the bed. Carefully, she, a mother practiced in these arts, guided his body downwards to lie comfortably on the pillow she quickly plumped up with one hand before resting his head on it.

During the night, some more blood had seeped through the bandage and run in small rivulets down the side of his face, which she removed by dabbing a clean spot of the rag she had seen lying on the nightstand into the basin and cleaned it away.

He did not wake, but stirred slightly at her touch, emitting a sound that she classified as an expression of gratitude and affirmation of the agreeable nature of what she was doing.

Thomas squirmed a little when she took the blanket away from him, he would however not have to wait long.

She draped the blanket over the large male frame in the bed, made sure he was sufficiently covered from head to toe and quickly slipped out of his room, the sleeping infant in her arms.

 

Nobody had seen her. Back in her own bed, she could not help but think about the past night. Thomas snuggled close to his mother and she absent-mindedly stroked his hair.

When it was time to rise in another one or two hours, the world would grow dark and dangerous again, despite the sun.

For one night, they’d both had what they needed, comfort, a family.

An inexplicable feeling rose in her stomach at the fresh memory of waking up leant against Simcoe’s shoulder that was accompanied by sadness:

Whatever her dreams that night (for she remembered a few scenes of these unbridled pieces of her imagination that made her blush), whatever the feelings of remorse for having shot him that had come with the last night, she would shoot him again if she had to protect her family.

-And she now knew he would do the same thing.

Theirs was a tragedy of longing, of castles in the clouds, of idealised family portraits they had seen in other people’s houses, when in truth he was alone, no wife or children from what she could tell from the little morsels of information he chose to share about himself and she, who had a family, did not have a happy one.

She wished him luck, one day perhaps, he would find someone with a taste for a ridiculously tall ginger with piercing eyes, an odd voice and a missing ear- and an oddly comforting physical presence.

And what about her? She would fight on. For Thomas. For herself. After this night, she found she had learned there were still other men on God’s green earth whose name wasn’t Abe Woodhull and maybe one of them would one day come her way.

And besides, a new dawn was approaching on the horizon, though the war wasn’t over yet and she would fight for what was hers. But after the war, who could say what would happen? Who would win, who lose? How would allegiances both political and personal shift?

 

At breakfast later in the morning, which she had dreaded as she was unsure what to do in the presence of the Captain, their eyes met. Richard did not notice a thing, he was busy shoving some overcooked bacon into his mouth.

 _I am sorry it had to come to this_ , Mary thought. She could never tell him what she did, that it was she who almost killed him.

But then, she had the odd feeling he would have done the same had he been in her shoes.

Simcoe smiled sadly at her as if he wanted to inform her about the bitter-sweetness of the past night, of what had only existed for a few hours and only for the three of them, or rather two, given that Thomas had been fast asleep.

She prayed she would never have to shoot him again. One day, he would make someone very happy. It would be a waste.


End file.
